XDR-TB carrier causes US health scare

He caused an international health scare by flying to his wedding in Greece and later to Canada while infected with extremely drug-resistant (XDR) tuberculosis. Now Andrew Speaker, a 31-year-old American, says his doctors told him "repeatedly" that he was not contagious - even to his new wife. "I really believed I wasn't putting people at risk because that was what I was told," Speaker told ABC News.

He is smear-negative, meaning no bacilli are visible in his sputum. Such people can transmit TB, but rarely do if they are symptom-free, like Speaker. "Someone not coughing, with a low burden of bacteria, should have a low index of contagion," says Marcel Behr of McGill University in Montreal, Canada, but this has never been directly measured.

Speaker says the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, knew of his wedding plans: ironically, the bride's father is a CDC ...

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